Metal Shell
by Artemis Ignitan
Summary: As time went on, the legendary duelist became encased in a sheath of metal, and Antinomy could do nothing but watch. Antinomy/Z-ONE angst fic. Spoilers for episode 145 and onward.


**(A/N): Aaah, it feels good to be near a computer again! Pretty much all of January was spent trying to get on the family computer to do basic things, so now that I have a working laptop again, I can write! You know! As much as I used to! **

**Ahhahahaha, yeah. I'm still not very prolific. Here, have more stuff that I forced my brain to write last night. Antinomy/Z-ONE wangst, go go go**

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_"I have saved you," he said. "Now you can save another. And that person will save the next. Together we will all find a way to rescue mankind from its mistakes, and make right what went wrong."  
_

The circumstances of their first meeting were straight out of a dream. He had been looking up the barrel of a cannon, had given up on life, had nothing to look forward to but a miserable, lonely end and a quick, painless death.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a blast from a cannon had changed it all. The monster was downed. His life was saved. A chance had been given to him.

And the person standing before him, the one who saved him, was the legendary Synchro-using duelist he had idolized. Had hoped, perhaps, to meet, even duel at one point. This person holding out his hand to him, was that duelist.

Within the current circumstances, he appeared just as the figure of hope that he always seemed to be on the dueling field. Pulling out a miracle just when the moment seemed bleakest.

And he was holding out his hand to _him_, Antinomy, who had lost all hope just a few scant moments before, to join him in creating those miracles. That alone was a miracle in itself.

So he took his hand.

(...)

It all started with the lost arm, Antinomy thinks sometimes. If it hadn't been for that arm, perhaps the legendary duelist (what was his name now?) wouldn't have...

The limb had been lost in yet another chaotic attempt at a rescue, trying to save some fighters that were going up against more of those...Synchro Killers, as the duelist had dubbed them.

The rescue had failed. The building the fighers had been in had collapsed. The duelist had been inside when it happened. Miraculously, he had survived, but he refused to get treatment for his mangled and torn lower arm without looking for other survivors.

They found none. And by the time they had retreated to their hideout, limping and weak, the exposed flesh had turned black and foul with gangrene. With their limited resources, there was no saving it. Neither of them wished to see it go, but they had no choice-a half-hour later and some thick, heavy gauze, the limb was roughly hewn off at the elbow and disposed of, promptly.

The legendary duelist limped around the hideout for several days after this, weak from loss of blood but refusing to slack off on his duties, locking himself in the room of coffins for hours at a time so that Antinomy couldn't force him to rest (as if he could, he was still recovering from his own injuries).

Antinomy hated seeing the duelist spend so much time in that room. It was unnerving, seeing him amongst all the dead, mourning for them as if he wanted to be with them, spending so much time with them that it was almost like he was...one of them.

It wasn't until he willingly showed himself that Antinomy realized what the other man was up to.

It was a surprise to him as he tried once again to experiment with leftover Momentum, trying to find a solution they hadn't before, to feel the other man's hands on his shoulders again. It was even more of a shock when he felt one hand with its usual warmth, the other feeling as chilly and stiff and inexonerable as death.

Turning, he spotted the metal limb, outwardly expressing both shock, then happiness at seeing that his friend had found a way to continue functioning, then scolding him for worrying him so, dragging the duelist back to bed and soaking in all the weak and heartfelt apologies. Inwardly, he felt a sense of loss. Like there was a part of his friend that would never come back. A part of him that was as cold and unfeeling as the corpses lying in the ever-growing arrays of elaborate "coffins," a part of him that would lead the rest of the body there.

He couldn't explain that feeling. Maybe it was a sense of dread, or foreboding. Maybe it was a premonition. Maybe it was him just being overdramatic. But there was no doubt in his mind now, that it was the arm that started it all.

(...)

Then again, with all the body parts the duelist continued to lose afterwards, maybe it could have started with them too. Perhaps he would have always lost that arm, if not in that collapsed building. Because after that arm went a leg, then his vocal cords, then one side of his face.

Perhaps the duelist wouldn't have gotten into so many accidents if he hadn't insisted on desperately going after any slight possibility that there would be people to save there. But that was what made the duelist so endearing, so easy to follow-he would go after any shred of hope, no matter how slight. But his miracle-making abilities...they seemed to have left him. And with the more limbs he lost, he seemed to become less awe-inspiring. He slouched more around the hideout, showing more weakness than Antinomy wanted to see. It took him longer and longer to do more tasks. And there were less and less supplies to repair his injuries through normal means.

So the duelist resorted to more metal limbs. He hobbled a bit after that, but it was nothing compared to his slouching, weary walk. But more and more of the man was being taken over by metal. And as much as the duelist tried to assure Antinomy that he was still the same man, he could never be sure. It was becoming more and more apparent that the duelist was running on borrowed time.

(...)

It was when the duelist lost half his face that the final nail in the coffin was hammered in. There were no skin grafts left. Not enough bandages to preserve his face long enough to make more. And neither of them were as strong or as young as they used to be, they couldn't go gallavanting around the ruins on their so-called rescue missions so much now. Again, just like all the other times, the only way they could preserve what time they had left was to resort to the damned metal covering.

But this time, Antinomy vehemently refused to let the duelist use the metal covering on his face. It was irrational, he knew. But somehow, there was a part of him that wanted to keep his face free of it for as long as possible. If his face disappeared, then...how would he know that the duelist was still alive? How would he know that all hope was not gone? How would he know that the other man would still be there the next day?

The duelist complied, and for the next week, Antinomy was at peace. He began trying to grow more skin samples for the duelist, but the cells didn't seem willing to cooperate-too old and already weathered. But no matter. There would be time enough. The duelist had hope, didn't he?

Or so Antinomy thought. Because after that week was done, Antinomy awoke to find the man's face completely entombed in a casing of steel.

It was like a betrayal of all they had thought and done. Didn't the duelist have faith anymore? Couldn't he have waited just a bit longer? Antinomy kept thinking these sorts of things, even as the rational part of him told him that the other man needed to stay alive, needed to do so by any means possible, that he was their hope.

Hope? What hope was left? Antinomy wanted to ask. But his thoughts were confused. His mind was shaken. And so what came out of his mouth was different from what he wanted to say.

_"...Why?"_

And the other duelist hung his head.

"...I'm sorry..."

Even that apology sounded empty, hollow, dead. That duelist was dead now, wasn't he? Every bit of him just as cold and unfeeling (_and gone_) as much as the bodies in the coffins.

(...)

There was someone alive. There was someone else alive. But Antinomy couldn't bring himself to be happy about it. What good was it, that someone else was alive? They wouldn't be able to give that same sort of hope that the duelist once had.

If anything, Antinomy didn't pay attention to this newcomer (Paradox, was it?), only introducing himself in a numb, rote routine sort of way. He was astonished that he hadn't forgotten it.

And then the duelist introduced himself as Z-ONE.

It took all he had to not look up in shock. Since when had he started calling himself that? And why?

Then Antinomy looked at "Z-ONE"'s profile. He looked nothing like how the legendary duelist had, when he had rescued him.

Perhaps it was more appropriate this way.

(...)

The name felt weird on his lips. But over time, he got used to it. He could never say it with the same affection and reverence that he had said the legendary duelist's name. (And how strange, with all that regard for that duelist's name, Antinomy could never remember it now. That duelist who lit the way to hope with his Synchros...) But regardless, affection was there, if for the sake of what once was rather than what existed now.

For Paradox, it was different. He had been saved by Z-ONE, he would follow Z-ONE, he would always remember him as Z-ONE. And so Antinomy would watch him follow Z-ONE around the same way he himself had once followed the legendary duelist. And so Antinomy came to regard this mechanical replacement with a sort of fondness.

It got to the point that by the time Z-ONE had found Aporia, he could easily follow after Z-ONE, not even wonder at the irony at the words Z-ONE said to Aporia as he held out one mechanical hand.

"I have saved you," he said. "Now you can save another. And that person will save the next. Together, we will all find a way to rescue mankind from its mistakes, and make right what went wrong."

Except they had saved no one. Z-ONE had found them all. Well...not all. Antinomy had been found by the legendary duelist. But that duelist was long dead. And for Antinomy's sake, he had left him the empty shell of Z-ONE to follow. So for that long-lost friend's sake, he would spend the rest of his ever-dwindling life following Z-ONE just as he would have followed that man.

Searching for that last bit of hope to change the future, so that the four of them could finally rest at peace together.

-FIN-

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**(A/N): gaglkshflskfhslkdfaslfh FFNet stop screwing up my formatting AAAAAAAAAAAAA-**

**...o rite**

**reviews**

**can I have some**


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